Joplin is an open source note-taking app(joplinapp.org) |
Joplin is an open source note-taking app(joplinapp.org) |
I recently migrated to Obsidian and although the learning curve is steeper, I'm quite happy with the results.
Joplin, while being open source itself, has a "proprietary"[1] storage format I can't be arsed to figure out how to interact with.
[1] Meaning non-standard in this case, Joplin is the only software using Joplin's storage method
This degradation of software by web apps shows in the lack of optimal resource utilization of even one of the most powerful chips of recent times.
This may be a slightly weird use case but I accumulate tons of pdf’s that are often relevant to my notes and want them easily embedded and viewable in a first class way. Obsidian is a great example of how not to handle a pdf locking it to a small portion of the window and not allowing it to be full screened.
Forcing the user to dump all of their pdf’s into something like google drive locked away from the rest of their notes is a crappy experience and h fortunately keeps me using apps like evernote purely for this functionality.
Will the client side be open source? I hope so because I'm on FreeBSD so you probably won't make a compiled version :)
my issue is i can’t find a platform with a fast mobile app
it seems they’re all react native
A-fucking-men. Web tools are for building web apps, software tools are for building software. I avoid all these goddamn electron things like the plague if at all fucking possible.
Garbage on phones, garbage on computers, garbage on tablets. Garbage.
What is the pricing model you have in mind?
I have about 13,000 notes (with embedded media PNGs, MP4s, etc) across 50 folders/subfolders on my Mac M1 and searching across all notes in Obsidian is for all intents and purposes instantaneous (less than a second).
At this point you could hook up ci for instance to publish a blog folder etc
Disclaimer: I've contributed to Joplin in the past, and I use it dozens of times a day with no big speed complaints.
If you have thousands of notes in a folder
~/my_notes
~/my_notes/work
~/my_notes/music
etc.Compare this to apps like VS Code / Obsidian / Logseq (also open source) which don't mess with your markdown file organization. You can just point them to a root folder and they'll work natively with your markdown files.
Furthermore, embedded media are also renamed to GUID.ext files and then are stored in ~/.config/joplin-desktop/resources which is terrible since now are notes are split from their related media.
Obsidian can handle an existing file structure.
I use Vim and folder sync to Nextcloud.
The embedded media is already referenced using relatively standard markdown syntax in a respective MD note, e.g.:
EDIT: I just realized if you're talking about adding media onto a note through the notetaking application itself, take a look at what Typora does as a good example of how to handle it. It auto-creates a relative folder called "note_name.assets" and moves them to it. Obsidian OTOH lets you specify a "media" folder that exists for each subdirectory of your existing note structure.
What you don't get is a "polished" UI with a WYSIWYG editor.
The storage format is markdown, but it has its own way of organizing files[1]. If your notetaking process includes multiple editors(other than joplin apps) then joplin may not be the best choice.
[1]. https://joplinapp.org/help/faq/#is-it-possible-to-use-real-f...
By external editor I mean editing the markdown files directly without opening joplin app first. There can be many reasons to do that like editing in a terminal or auto generate/manipulate notes using a tool. We can still do it of required but we need to be careful not to touch the Joplin metadata.
PS: I use Joplin regularly. These are not complaints about Joplin, but just an fyi to help someone make an informed decision before they switch.
That's a big advantage for me as usually the issue I had with other note taking apps in the past is how hard they lock you in, particularly after years of using them.
Joplin – an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27520906 - June 2021 (74 comments)
Joplin – an open source note taking and to-do application with sync - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22439485 - Feb 2020 (36 comments)
Joplin – a note taking and to-do application with synchronization capabilities - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21555238 - Nov 2019 (150 comments)
Joplin – A note-taking and to-do app with builds for desktop, mobile, terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 - Nov 2017 (204 comments)
Both of those use Tesseract to do OCR locally. I've got it working on Joplin fairly well. But it hardly works at all on Obsidian. That's unfortunate because Obsidian seems to be a much more user friendly and responsive app over all. Since I need the OCR search capability so badly though, I'm about to settle for Joplin. That's not a terrible fate, but the grass seems greener on the Obsidian side.
I wish I could replace Tesseract with some industrial strength OCR though.
https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/index-recoll.htm...
I just wish it didn't require having the app loaded to use. I actually use it with another editor on Linux. (It works surprisingly well with VS Code for example.)
But it's the best we have for Android, sadly.
I think the sync server is Joplin’s secret weapon on this front. I tried using Syncthing for managing my docs for a while, but I think having a dedicated sync server helps on mobile. I found using alternative sync methods was too wonky on a mobile device.
Works like a charm. Currently using 0.7GB out of 5GB.
Cryptomator works well as long as your on a desktop platform, but when you move to a smartphone they provide only their crippled file-manager which is not accessible form third party apps.
(on x platform, Windows/iOS use case here, but just post your needs)
I tried to move to Obsidian from Evernote after they raised the subscription price but wasn't able to onboard successfully - Obsidian seemed powerful but was too customizable for me, had to get back to more pressing day job needs before I could figure out a setup that would work for me, ended up just paying the Evernote fee another year.
Have Joplin plugins been secured/sandboxed yet, or are they still able to exfiltrate data? That's one reason I never used it for very secure notes, same with Obsidian. Joplin also used to store notes unencrypted locally, not sure if that's still the case. Of course most people don't mind, but I was investigating the highest-security note tool I could find at the time.
- WYSIWYG editor: rendered text and editor are in same window - Vim Bindings - Bonus: Terminal integration (TUI)
The second has come to be even more important than the first, so I now take my notes in (neo)vim. I wish it was possible to have WYSIWYG in the terminal, but that seems to be an impossible task (rows of text all being the same size is baked into the terminal ecosystem).
Having a GUI WYSIWYG with vim bindings is probably pretty doable, but the lack of terminal ecosystem has discouraged me from looking into this (even though it is not that important, but I am a perfectionist).
I love that it’s formatted, but it’s also just text. I normally leave it in markdown mode and edit that directly (learn the syntax, it’s easy). To paste into email, documents etc, put it to display mode and it’ll paste html. Good.
@cimnine The key feature for me is global search (ctrl/cmd+p) but it doesn’t work well enough!! 1. it doesn’t favour exact matches and 2. it doesn’t jump to the match. I use vi-mode if that’s important.
Overall it’s excellent IMO. There are clients for all major platforms.
Basically my setup is: Zim + Syncthing for synchronization + Markor on android
The biggest points are about the UX. My workflow requires switching between multiple notes rapidly (e.g., TODO list, Project 1, Project 2, Employee 1, Employee 2, Meeting Notes 1, and so on) and Joplin doesn't have native tabs. The plugin is only so so but it works only on desktop (I'm on Mac).
On mobile it's a disaster. Doubly so on iPad which is just stretched phone version - working productively on iPad (which is otherwise just fine for my job) is impossible with Joplin. Plus the mobile app has awful design and awful navigation. Who on Earth would put the most used button to the top left corner? Swipe from the left doesn't work of course because the following:
Neither desktop of mobile app follow the system patterns. Keyboard shortucts, if they exist, are different. Navigation is different. Everything is sort of clunky.
I used Dropbox for sync and while it does work, it's very slow and there's no background sync. On a regular day I have to sync about 50 items (some of them are history I guess) which can take a minute or two, which is the time I don't have when I open my phone and want to quickly add an item to the TODO list. Couple that with no conflict resolution and a recipe for data loss is born :-) .
Initial sync on a new phone took me eight fucking hours when I had to keep the phone open and the app in the foreground.
What I do appreciate is the native encryption. Now I do all my work in Obsidian but keep Joplin for the secrets.
So this is the main problems I had with Joplin. Rant over (but you asked) :-)
Not related to the parent comment but I have been using the math plugin and I love it. It does unit conversion and lots of other things!
Joplin is open source, doesn't really have a plugin ecosystem, has a custom storage format for its data and is _really_ easy and reliable to sync with WebDav (I had mine set up with Fastmail's webdav while sipping my morning coffee)
Obsidian (my current system for going on 2 years) on the other hand is the closest I've gotten to org-mode with a modern tool, with all the pluses and minuses.
The plugin ecosystem is completely crazy, you can find a plugin for pretty much everything. And you'll lose days of actual work progress bikeshedding the plugin system =)
Data is stored as regular standard files (Canvases are the exception, but there really isn't a standard for stuff like that).
Syncing with third party tools is ... workable if you don't switch platforms quickly - basically if you make a note on your phone and immediately switch to desktop, the note might appear or might not, depends on the phase of the moon. iCloud takes a while to sync and sometimes just freezes, works fine if you let it work. Dropbox, OneDrive etc aren't officially supported and tend to have conflicts.
I actually ended up paying for their sync service and it Just Works - even though it's not the cheapest option, but _for_me_ it's worth it because I regularly use multiple devices in short succession on the same notes.
Instead we routinely get zero security at all and also heavily encouraging people to install entirely unchecked stuff in a built-in and implicitly-trusted first party UI.
You can put all your documents/PDFs there and structure them as you wish. And it will be syncing locally only!
It will be a subscription model. $25 paid yearly or $3 monthly (that’s the idea for now).
Sqlite does give some speed improvements and makes searching easier.
You don't _need_ all of the fancy plugins that Obsidian has, but some of them are genuinely useful.
Also, the app's really good, and I pay for Sync -- git works well, but it's a bit clumsier on iOS. Never posted a paid comment in my life.
I share the vault folder between devices with syncthing. Free and open source.
But perhaps you could do the monetisation via the sync service only and make the app open source :) That would be great, at least for me so I could compile it on FreeBSD. Some others do this, like Obsidian, for which there's an actual BSD port. But it's electron, sadly. But I understand... It's a tiny niche. I'll keep looking.
Of course I can't use flatpak and snap. And I can't stand snaps so no way I'd use that. Flatpaks are a bit better but not working on BSD.
I really used to love tomboy. It was fast, rich text, would automatically hyperlink notes together as you typed, it was so great. But they stopped development on it. There were a few reboots but they were complete rewrites and lacked all the speed and smoothness I loved.
Plume seems very pretty - good job on that, but....
"All notes in Plume are simple plaintext strings under the hood. Right now, all these plaintext strings are stored in a SQLite database locally on your computer. But we have plans to remove the reliance on a custom database and to store all notes as simple .txt files inside a folder."
I've been burned too many times by organizational tools that like to keep your notes internally stored within their systems.
But usually developers don't care enough about the tiny userbase of FreeBSD to even consider that. If you would do that, I would really like it, though I can imagine that from a time/gains perspective there is no point. Which I do totally understand.
One thing I like is that your monthly fee is very reasonable. Obsidian costs double the price of my entire Microsoft 365 subscription :) Besides it being electron that's another issue for me. Especially because it's just not really that great.